We got a new Samsung TV and the remote has a solar panel on it, so yes it is in production. It does have a backup of USB-C in case it does run out. I have never charged it after 6 months.
We put in Solar this year and have found that we CAN generate significant power, but we have NON-optimum orientation. We also are not using roof top solar on the roof. We installed 'too much' solar but since it is non-optimum it isn't. Can go into specifics if folks are interested.
At the end when Sean makes the remark about Matt not getting of the ground, I immediately had a vision of Sean giving Matt a Red Bull and Matt sprouting wings and flying away. LOL
We've had low power indoor PV for forever, the first 'solar' calculator was introduced in 1976, I'm not sure why that tech hasn't transfered to other areas like the mentioned smart home sensors! I hate having a dozen different rechargable battery types for all the sensors and devices.
I love the idea of transparent solar but under ever window there is a wall section where normal solar panles could be mounted that would produce the same amount of power at a fraction of the price
Matt, weren't you the person I (ed:sp saw) a while ago who did a show including a sewage plant that was producing a coal substitute from their effluent, maybe including other carboniscious(?) waste? (addm:) This greener coal could be transported to areas where there are extant coal plants and poor prospects for more sustainable energy generation.
A "tree" that is a solar collector. Imagine the leaves, all solar collectors. You have the aesthetics of a tree and the benefit of solar with no roof panels. Think like Leonardo da Vinci and anything's possible.
Think of all the extra labor required to make it look like a tree. Tiny little solar connectors don't seem like they would be as efficient as a medium large square or rectangle. I can also imagine it not being as resistant to damage during a storm, either. Only practical advantage I see is the tree would be resistant to drought. Sorry to rain on the solar tree idea.
I think CIGS is the transparent solar tech, I use CIGS, they're crazy expensive and only 17% efficient. I've heard if they went into mass production they could be a lot cheaper. One advantage is they are super-flexible (they come rolled up like a carpet!) and good in low light or partially shaded. I rent, have no balcony, and no roof acccess, so my "solar install" is CIGS panels I pulled on the roof with ropes and tied down at both ends. Easy(ish), removable and non-damaging.
The notion that interior solar panels might power the house which supplies them evokes perpetual motion... just electronically... and violates the conservation of energy (in thermodynamics) among among other things. So, I agree with Matt's conclusion that the use cases will be for small independent appliances.
When talking about efficiency. If everything came down to efficiency we would hardly have electricity at all today. Almost everything that generates power is doing so at a relatively low efficiency.
Thanks for the presentation. I am seeing more and more stories of people with solar arrays having more power than they need, even with batteries. It is also becoming more common that renewables in many areas are producing, as a whole, surplus energy. The concept is Positives and Negatives.. So, we will have Positive communities that will share their surplus with Negative communities. I also think that batters are the key. Energy transmission will be between batteries.
That's because you need 10x more panel in the winter to get the same output as summer so people just get more panel. I'd say we don't have long term battery storage but we do, it just cost money to store for long term, you need more battery, and they are expensive relative to the panel so there will always be a surplus unless battery prices come down or other long term storage gets figured out. Pumping water up a hill is one way. One TH-camr did an experiment pumping water with a 100w panel all day and managed to fill a barrel in 8 hours and it released 1 AA battery worth of energy comming down from his rooftop. Not much, but it's better then no storage.
@@mikejones-vd3fg It's more like 2x or 3x on average. Definitely not 10x. Where the problem arises is when a winter storm rolls in the cloud-cover is so heavy you get very little solar generation for a few days in a row. Now, battery prices have come down. A lot. Even just this year they have dropped by like 40%. But battery storage is still the most expensive part of a system. Despite all these warts, self-sufficiency in home renewable installations is increasing. We're talking at least 250, sometimes almost 300 days per year of 100% self sufficiency with only 1-2 days worth of battery storage. On the flip side, nobody should really be trying to put together a true "off grid" system when utility mains are available. You put together a decent system that can make ends meet in an emergency, you don't put together a system that lets you live your same life of luxury in an emergency. The name of the game is to always have at least a little backup generation (like a little 2000W or 3000W gasoline generator) to help make ends meet in a true emergency. -Matt
@@mikejones-vd3fg You are thinking in individual terms. I am talking about groups of homes including commercial structures. Yes, in the winter northern latitudes get less sunlight. That's where power sharing comes in. One baseload source I am following is enhanced geothermal, especially for less solar friendly places. Besides geothermal generated electricity, a company called Sage is experimenting on double duty geothermal wells to include long-term storage.
There's a really easy way to show why inside panels won't be useful at scale, and that is simply look at the power consumed by your room's LED light to light up the room at night. That's like 10W, and it will illuminate the whole room quite well. So how much of that could a small solar cell in the room actually soak up? Probably just a few milliwatts, even as low as a hundred microwatts. Even if it were 100% efficient the amount of power would be miniscule (the area of the cell / lit surface area of the room x 10W). In fact, I have a little FX-115ES Casio calculator right in front of me that I purchased a very long time ago... like 10 years ago, which I use regularly. A have literally never replaced the battery in this thing. Never. This works for things like, say, one of those Casio calculators with a built-in solar cell, ONLY because those calculators literally only burn tens of microwatts of power, and then only while you are holding down a key. 0.000010W. But an indoor panel wouldn't be useful for devices which need real power, like a cell phone. It gets better... probably more than HALF of the little solar-cell calculators you see on Amazon don't actually bother to wire up the solar cell internally, and sometimes even the cell itself behind that little piece of plastic is not real. They use so little power that the battery lasts its entire shelf life with no effort. -Matt
Im surprised we dont see bifacial cells added as borders on large glass windows, think the blue strip at the top of a windshield but with a strip of bifacial cells
Hi Gents, a friend has installed a large solar instal for his home. He used all bi-facial panels but he mounted the similar to conventional panels on steel stands. He rotates them monthly to optimize for the single side. It the winter he continues to use them as single sided but seems to get a significant reflection from snow on the underside of his panels. Seasonal snow load is 120”-240” per yer. I wondered if that was an optimal use of bi facial panels. What are your thoughts.
Thanks for the breakdown! Just a quick off-topic question: I have a SafePal wallet with USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). Could you explain how to move them to Binance?
We do have cigs panels, but they are only making rollable panels, not glass panels... Thus you have a limited places where you can actually mount rollable panels...and it is not easily removed because you glue it down!!! I cannot put them on a shingle roof or take them withme if i move...
Solar roads? Electrified roads would make sense with massive government investment and subsidies to lower prices. That would reduce battery size and eliminate range anxiety.
Every time I hear these stories about ISP monopolies in US towns, I somehow forget the smaller issues with the 3 ISP offering fiber to my home, plus the cellular no cap offers. Sure, rural areas are under-served , but still not like the horror stories of overpaying and lousy internet service over there.
Passive EV charging with, e.g. 500W of solar on the car itself (think Aptera) is definitely a thing. If you leave your EV in an airport parking lot at a low state of charge, for example, but it had a solar panel, it would never go dead. Such a solar panel could never supply enough power to actually run the vehicle in real-time, but passively you can actually gain ... well, lets calculate it. 500W x 3h/day = 1.5 kWh x 3 miles/kWh = 4.5 miles/day in range (or more) gained on a full-sized EV. On an Aptera it would be far more. That's actually useful. I'm in fair of having at least one decent solar panel on a car. I'd take it over the panorama roof in a split second. -Matt
First, let me just say that I'm a retired EE (so I live, breath, and love new tech), and that I'm excited about things like future energy. "Solar freaking roadways," is a non-starter for two reasons: #1, impractical. The requirements of a road and the requirements of a solar collector are completely at odds. Think cost, cleanliness, durability, traction, repairability, etc. #1, we don't need them. Look at all the naked roofs on people's houses. Plus, solar over parking lots is a better use of land and resources. Kind of related are solar roofs (shingles, etc). Expensive, but otherwise okay in some circumstances. A few years ago I looked into flexible solar panels that were dark blue, and fit between the ribs of standing-seam metal roofing (ideally, painted dark blue). Unfortunately they only come in fixed lengths, and per-watt cost about double that of typical solar panels. Not mentioned, but schemes to clean up the floating plastic in the middle of the oceans. #1, no one has even tried to permanently anchor structures in water that is 2-plus miles deep. #2, what about storms with 40-foot high waves (and sometimes much higher). Fortunately, that crowd has settled on filtering plastic trash out of rivers leading into the oceans. Works because about half the plastic garbage is coming down only a few rivers that share 2 attributes: #1, large populations of poor people who couldn't afford garbage service. #2, no available garbage service in those countries anyway. Solar cells on EVs. The main reason this scheme doesn't work is the amount of power the typical automobile sucks down, and lack of enough surface area to mount solar cells. However, the Aptera (car) addresses both issues, but only works in the way Matt says---charging in sunlight while sitting parked. Aptera is in pre-production and should start shipping Q1 of next year. Reasonably priced, so of course I want one.
"flat on the ground" solar panels have been tried many times over the last decade and it's an utter failure. At ground-level the collect way to much damage.And because they are flat, they collect dirt, dust, and crud that just stays there and rain doesn't wash any of it away.
Charging is not the achilles of EV…ignorance, misinformation, and cost. With that said, solar panels on EV’s will eventually be a thing if it’s relatively trivial and cost-effective to implement for the EV manufacturer
The only vehicle that can usefully power itself with onboard solar is the airship. Covering Sergei's zeppelin with solar panels would enable it to go about 60mph 24 hours a day (not sure what fraction of cargo would need to be batteries). This blows through the speed limit on the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n%E2%80%93Gabrielli_diagram ^_^
We got a new Samsung TV and the remote has a solar panel on it, so yes it is in production. It does have a backup of USB-C in case it does run out. I have never charged it after 6 months.
We put in Solar this year and have found that we CAN generate significant power, but we have NON-optimum orientation. We also are not using roof top solar on the roof. We installed 'too much' solar but since it is non-optimum it isn't. Can go into specifics if folks are interested.
It's also the lower temperatures that maximize solar efficiency in the fall and spring.
At the end when Sean makes the remark about Matt not getting of the ground, I immediately had a vision of Sean giving Matt a Red Bull and Matt sprouting wings and flying away. LOL
We've had low power indoor PV for forever, the first 'solar' calculator was introduced in 1976, I'm not sure why that tech hasn't transfered to other areas like the mentioned smart home sensors! I hate having a dozen different rechargable battery types for all the sensors and devices.
My favorite part is the link to Matt's video that was talked about so much
I love the idea of transparent solar but under ever window there is a wall section where normal solar panles could be mounted that would produce the same amount of power at a fraction of the price
So do both
Matt, weren't you the person I (ed:sp saw) a while ago who did a show including a sewage plant that was producing a coal substitute from their effluent, maybe including other carboniscious(?) waste? (addm:) This greener coal could be transported to areas where there are extant coal plants and poor prospects for more sustainable energy generation.
A "tree" that is a solar collector. Imagine the leaves, all solar collectors. You have the aesthetics of a tree and the benefit of solar with no roof panels. Think like Leonardo da Vinci and anything's possible.
Think of all the extra labor required to make it look like a tree. Tiny little solar connectors don't seem like they would be as efficient as a medium large square or rectangle. I can also imagine it not being as resistant to damage during a storm, either. Only practical advantage I see is the tree would be resistant to drought. Sorry to rain on the solar tree idea.
@@frommatorav1 I respect your view but if all great ideas were shot down, we'd have no new technology. I have faith in technology.
I think CIGS is the transparent solar tech, I use CIGS, they're crazy expensive and only 17% efficient. I've heard if they went into mass production they could be a lot cheaper. One advantage is they are super-flexible (they come rolled up like a carpet!) and good in low light or partially shaded. I rent, have no balcony, and no roof acccess, so my "solar install" is CIGS panels I pulled on the roof with ropes and tied down at both ends. Easy(ish), removable and non-damaging.
The notion that interior solar panels might power the house which supplies them evokes perpetual motion... just electronically... and violates the conservation of energy (in thermodynamics) among among other things. So, I agree with Matt's conclusion that the use cases will be for small independent appliances.
in my best Ralph Wiggum voice, "I'm trending!" lol
When talking about efficiency. If everything came down to efficiency we would hardly have electricity at all today. Almost everything that generates power is doing so at a relatively low efficiency.
Thanks for the presentation. I am seeing more and more stories of people with solar arrays having more power than they need, even with batteries. It is also becoming more common that renewables in many areas are producing, as a whole, surplus energy. The concept is Positives and Negatives.. So, we will have Positive communities that will share their surplus with Negative communities. I also think that batters are the key. Energy transmission will be between batteries.
That's because you need 10x more panel in the winter to get the same output as summer so people just get more panel. I'd say we don't have long term battery storage but we do, it just cost money to store for long term, you need more battery, and they are expensive relative to the panel so there will always be a surplus unless battery prices come down or other long term storage gets figured out. Pumping water up a hill is one way. One TH-camr did an experiment pumping water with a 100w panel all day and managed to fill a barrel in 8 hours and it released 1 AA battery worth of energy comming down from his rooftop. Not much, but it's better then no storage.
@@mikejones-vd3fg It's more like 2x or 3x on average. Definitely not 10x. Where the problem arises is when a winter storm rolls in the cloud-cover is so heavy you get very little solar generation for a few days in a row. Now, battery prices have come down. A lot. Even just this year they have dropped by like 40%. But battery storage is still the most expensive part of a system.
Despite all these warts, self-sufficiency in home renewable installations is increasing. We're talking at least 250, sometimes almost 300 days per year of 100% self sufficiency with only 1-2 days worth of battery storage.
On the flip side, nobody should really be trying to put together a true "off grid" system when utility mains are available. You put together a decent system that can make ends meet in an emergency, you don't put together a system that lets you live your same life of luxury in an emergency. The name of the game is to always have at least a little backup generation (like a little 2000W or 3000W gasoline generator) to help make ends meet in a true emergency.
-Matt
@@mikejones-vd3fg
You are thinking in individual terms. I am talking about groups of homes including commercial structures. Yes, in the winter northern latitudes get less sunlight. That's where power sharing comes in. One baseload source I am following is enhanced geothermal, especially for less solar friendly places. Besides geothermal generated electricity, a company called Sage is experimenting on double duty geothermal wells to include long-term storage.
There's a really easy way to show why inside panels won't be useful at scale, and that is simply look at the power consumed by your room's LED light to light up the room at night. That's like 10W, and it will illuminate the whole room quite well. So how much of that could a small solar cell in the room actually soak up? Probably just a few milliwatts, even as low as a hundred microwatts. Even if it were 100% efficient the amount of power would be miniscule (the area of the cell / lit surface area of the room x 10W).
In fact, I have a little FX-115ES Casio calculator right in front of me that I purchased a very long time ago... like 10 years ago, which I use regularly. A have literally never replaced the battery in this thing. Never.
This works for things like, say, one of those Casio calculators with a built-in solar cell, ONLY because those calculators literally only burn tens of microwatts of power, and then only while you are holding down a key. 0.000010W. But an indoor panel wouldn't be useful for devices which need real power, like a cell phone.
It gets better... probably more than HALF of the little solar-cell calculators you see on Amazon don't actually bother to wire up the solar cell internally, and sometimes even the cell itself behind that little piece of plastic is not real. They use so little power that the battery lasts its entire shelf life with no effort.
-Matt
I am 1000000% down for decorating the fake cell tree!!
Im surprised we dont see bifacial cells added as borders on large glass windows, think the blue strip at the top of a windshield but with a strip of bifacial cells
Hi Gents, a friend has installed a large solar instal for his home. He used all bi-facial panels but he mounted the similar to conventional panels on steel stands. He rotates them monthly to optimize for the single side. It the winter he continues to use them as single sided but seems to get a significant reflection from snow on the underside of his panels. Seasonal snow load is 120”-240” per yer. I wondered if that was an optimal use of bi facial panels. What are your thoughts.
Thanks for the breakdown! Just a quick off-topic question: I have a SafePal wallet with USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). Could you explain how to move them to Binance?
We do have cigs panels, but they are only making rollable panels, not glass panels... Thus you have a limited places where you can actually mount rollable panels...and it is not easily removed because you glue it down!!! I cannot put them on a shingle roof or take them withme if i move...
OMG it’s 2 Matt Ferrells!
Solar roads? Electrified roads would make sense with massive government investment and subsidies to lower prices. That would reduce battery size and eliminate range anxiety.
Every time I hear these stories about ISP monopolies in US towns, I somehow forget the smaller issues with the 3 ISP offering fiber to my home, plus the cellular no cap offers. Sure, rural areas are under-served , but still not like the horror stories of overpaying and lousy internet service over there.
Passive EV charging with, e.g. 500W of solar on the car itself (think Aptera) is definitely a thing. If you leave your EV in an airport parking lot at a low state of charge, for example, but it had a solar panel, it would never go dead. Such a solar panel could never supply enough power to actually run the vehicle in real-time, but passively you can actually gain ... well, lets calculate it. 500W x 3h/day = 1.5 kWh x 3 miles/kWh = 4.5 miles/day in range (or more) gained on a full-sized EV. On an Aptera it would be far more.
That's actually useful. I'm in fair of having at least one decent solar panel on a car. I'd take it over the panorama roof in a split second.
-Matt
First, let me just say that I'm a retired EE (so I live, breath, and love new tech), and that I'm excited about things like future energy.
"Solar freaking roadways," is a non-starter for two reasons: #1, impractical. The requirements of a road and the requirements of a solar collector are completely at odds. Think cost, cleanliness, durability, traction, repairability, etc. #1, we don't need them. Look at all the naked roofs on people's houses. Plus, solar over parking lots is a better use of land and resources.
Kind of related are solar roofs (shingles, etc). Expensive, but otherwise okay in some circumstances. A few years ago I looked into flexible solar panels that were dark blue, and fit between the ribs of standing-seam metal roofing (ideally, painted dark blue). Unfortunately they only come in fixed lengths, and per-watt cost about double that of typical solar panels.
Not mentioned, but schemes to clean up the floating plastic in the middle of the oceans. #1, no one has even tried to permanently anchor structures in water that is 2-plus miles deep. #2, what about storms with 40-foot high waves (and sometimes much higher). Fortunately, that crowd has settled on filtering plastic trash out of rivers leading into the oceans. Works because about half the plastic garbage is coming down only a few rivers that share 2 attributes: #1, large populations of poor people who couldn't afford garbage service. #2, no available garbage service in those countries anyway.
Solar cells on EVs. The main reason this scheme doesn't work is the amount of power the typical automobile sucks down, and lack of enough surface area to mount solar cells. However, the Aptera (car) addresses both issues, but only works in the way Matt says---charging in sunlight while sitting parked. Aptera is in pre-production and should start shipping Q1 of next year. Reasonably priced, so of course I want one.
In the Netherlands almost every city has glass fiber by now, I know our country is very small😊
Not Matt Ferrell but Sean Ferrell Decided
wouldn't wind **between** the trains make more sense than solar on the train tracks?
I think of it as - ground floor = zero. Smarter actually. But like metric, it will never happen here.
Solarpanels in rhe dutch tracks😂😂😂 every 10 minutes a train! How much sunlight would they get?
"flat on the ground" solar panels have been tried many times over the last decade and it's an utter failure. At ground-level the collect way to much damage.And because they are flat, they collect dirt, dust, and crud that just stays there and rain doesn't wash any of it away.
Solar research can only benefit production, and no country comes close to competing with Chinese production.
This pragmatism is refreshing.
Charging is not the achilles of EV…ignorance, misinformation, and cost. With that said, solar panels on EV’s will eventually be a thing if it’s relatively trivial and cost-effective to implement for the EV manufacturer
The only vehicle that can usefully power itself with onboard solar is the airship. Covering Sergei's zeppelin with solar panels would enable it to go about 60mph 24 hours a day (not sure what fraction of cargo would need to be batteries). This blows through the speed limit on the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n%E2%80%93Gabrielli_diagram ^_^